Sales Rep Tips: Daily Schedules for Max Efficiency

Sales Development Reps (SDRs) have non-stop days, containing a seemingly never-ending litany of tasks. The Bridge Groupfound that approximately 65% of SDRs meet or exceed their quotas. Fortunately, according to Marketo, a 5% increase in selling time can yield a 20% increase in revenue. To increase selling time and revenue, SDRs must take control of their days by planning their activities carefully. A daily schedule will allow you to be as productive as possible to accomplish your goals. Let’s take a look at how every sales rep can create a personalized schedule based on specific requirements and individual differences.

Know your goals and objectives

Before planning a daily schedule, it’s important to take time to list out your goals and the steps you should take to attain them. Once you have done this, you will be able to break these down into daily and weekly objectives. This makes the process of meeting them feel much more manageable. Besure each of your daily, weekly, and monthly components are easily measurable and identify themetrics you’ll use to track your progress.

Create a daily plan

Now that you have a list of your goals, the steps you’ll take to reach them, and the metrics you’ll track to measure your progress, you are ready to actually create your daily schedule. Here’s a few things you’ll want to take into account as you build your initial daily plan:

Consider time zones, your peak energy, and your personality – If you are calling prospects in a different time zone, you must take this into consideration when determining what times during the day will be your peak calling times. Another factor is the time of day your energy level is best. Some people are sharper in the morning, and others function best later in the day. When possible, plan tasks that require you to be really clear and focused during your best times. Use times when you’re less alert to perform routine activities. Your personality enters into this too. Where extroverts are energized by social interactions, introverts tend to be exhausted by them. Take this into consideration while creating your schedule.

Batch admin work – Instead of slowing your momentum by recording activity in your CRM during phone time or sending follow-up e-mails after each call, block off times during the day to perform these activities. Batching like activities together will increase your efficiency. Take notes during calls and focus your efforts on the quality of each call. Then refer back to your notes when completing administrative tasks.

Utilize a research process – Be sure to include a block of time, and formulate a process, to complete research on prospects, content to share, and the like. Including this in your set routine. Doing it daily is advantageous. It will increase the quality of your calls while improving your research skills.

Include time to recap daily – At the end of each day, take the time to recap, review, and plan. What went well? What didn’t? Where do you need to improve? During this block of time you can review your metrics and listen to yourcall recordings. You can also listen to recordings of more senior reps to learn how to improve your calls and conversations. Be sure to end by planning for the next day so you get a fast start each morning.

Steamline processes, eliminate inefficiencies, continually fine-tune

After you’ve had a chance to work your daily schedule for a few weeks, make a routine of reevaluating what’s going well and what needs to improve. You should always be looking for ways to eliminate inefficiencies. As you continually fine-tune your daily schedule you’ll become more and more productive. Here’s a few tips to help you accomplish this goal:

Automate parallel or redundant tasks – In addition to batching similar administrative tasks, there are many tools available toautomate processes. Increase your sales productivity by utilizing sales acceleration solutions that allow you to easily dial down a prospect list, drop pre-recorded voicemails, or view relevant prospect information within a dialer to eliminate the need to search. This frees up time to focus on activities that get you closer to meeting and exceeding your targets.

Set up alerts – There are various alerts you can set up to simplify your work. If you use Salesforce, events can be created to schedule follow up tasks with prospects at a specific time and date. Since RingDNA exclusively integrates with Salesforce, you can set tasks and add events from directly within the Intelligent Dialer. Using task reminders triggers alerts so you don’t have to watch the clock and helps you to prioritize your prospecting activities.

Shut down distractions – Multitasking can be challenging, but not useful, when you want to be most efficient. Shut down social media, email, and other distractions when you aren’t scheduled to be using these applications. You can also use special applications to reduce distractions. For example, these chrome extensions, and this one, block selected sites during designated times to help reduce distractions. Other chrome extensions, such as OneTab or TabScissors and TabGlue, help increase focus by aiding in the organization of open tabs.

Stick to your schedule – Although you may fine-tune your daily schedule over time, you need to follow your plan once the day begins. Straying from it will only cause you to get off course and allow inefficiencies.

Eliminate meetings when possible – Meetings are often unproductive unless they are well planned out and apply directly to all attendees. Whenever possible, avoid attending meetings that will not directly improve your ability to do your job. Of course, there are times when you will have to attend meetings. Hopefully they’ll be scheduled well in advance so it has a minimal impact on your workflow.

Setting a daily sales schedule will help you know what you’re striving for, how you’re going to get there, and track your progress. It will allow you to increase you’re your efficiency and reach your goals. So, why don’t you give it a try?

About the Author

Melissa Halim manages Product Marketing at RingDNA. Prior to this, she worked in the edtech industry as a Product Manager overseeing international monetization and customer development along with an extensive background in B2B digital marketing.

About the Author

Melissa Halim manages Product Marketing at RingDNA. Prior to this, she worked in the edtech industry as a Product Manager overseeing international monetization and customer development along with an extensive background in B2B digital marketing.